I would like to ask the readers and contributors here at RNS for some help.
Some back story: I’ve been married for almost two years now. Two teenage step-kids and a baby. We’re planning another baby eventually. About nine months ago, I started a new job in a field I plan to make my career. The job doubled my salary overnight; I love it, I like more than ninety percent of the people in my immediate work unit. Life is great.
Now that I am making decent money I have been able to set some aside for long-delayed projects. Things like Glamdring, who languished for seven years waiting to be whole. I have a lot of projects waiting in the wings; more than I can tackle at once and certainly more than I have money to pay for all at once, even with my shiny new paychecks. My mother told me when I was in middle school, “Successful people make lists.” Well, I don’t know if all of them do, but once I started keeping lists I at least didn’t forget things as often. And I have quite a few lists, probably none of them particularly exciting or unusual for most of our readers. Among them, inevitably, is my “Firearms List.” It’s fairly long and involved, I’ve spent quite a bit of thought on it. Finally seeing some progress on that list has been nice.
Wolf’s “cane gun” post of the other day triggered this post. My current project involves reconfiguring my childhood hunting shotgun, a 20-gauge Remington 870 Wingmaster given to me when I was ten years old. I want to be able to convert it from a hunting weapon to a home-defense shotgun that my wife or daughter could use at need. They are both small women: the standard length of pull is far too great, and the 28″ full-choke barrel, while it has bagged me many a bird on the wing, makes the gun unwieldy indoors, and adds to the girls’ difficulty in handling it. The project has hit some snags, but it proceeds. I’ll be sure to provide pictures and so forth once it’s complete. I was updating my firearms list last week regarding this project while my wife was reading over my shoulder. She expressed concern about my overall firearms list: “Are you preparing for World War III?”
I doubt any self-respecting “prepper” would consider my current state of readiness for most scenarios anywhere near up to snuff (subject of another list), so no I can’t claim to be preparing for WWIII. Her immediate worry was that if I spend too much money on “gun stuff” that our home improvement projects will suffer. I tried to explain the utility of a more compact shotgun for defense, but it became clear that we were talking past each other. In my wife’s view, I have a .45 caliber bedside gun; home defense is thus achieved. Anything else is just fun toys for me to mess with. I don’t see it that way, but my arguments clearly didn’t convince her.
So I ask you folks: how do I explain my concerns and make my points without winding up on the couch? My wife is not anti-gun; far from it. She is, however, relatively new to guns and not extremely experienced in their use or the sorts of mindsets that go with them. We are going to be getting training together, (it’s on a list) but I feel that I could stand to have more ammunition, so to speak, when we discuss these sorts of things in the future.
Fire away! And thanks in advance.
